Sunday, June 14, 2015

We are moving ever further from common law towards the tyranny of Roman
law in which everything is banned unless it is specifically permitted.

....

It is often said that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but that can
only reasonably apply when the law is written in such a way as to leave
no doubt as to what is permitted and what is forbidden. A law which can
put you in prison for seven years for not memorising all the exemptions
to a piece of legislation that amounts to an all-out war on chemistry is
capricious. You’ll get no argument from me if you say that most of
people who get prosecuted under this law will be lying when they claim
that they ‘didn’t know it was illegal’ but for a non-trivial minority it
will be the truth.

Of course, such "whitelist" laws are increasingly popular with new technology too.

Are the police really going to come after people with air freshener or
flowers in their home? Plainly not. But that's precisely the problem.
This is not law as we know it. It is the aspiration of a child-like
intellect cloaked in the respectability of a government bill. Trying to
ascertain the effects is like trying to sit down on an imaginary chair:
it does not exist. It is not there. It is just words. You might as well
legislate against sub-standard sausage sandwiches made by a deli in
2018.

The really depressing thing is that, with expected Tory, Labour and SNP
support, this insane bill is likely to pass with barely any opposition
at all. But it will at least serve as a symbol of how deranged our
debate on drugs has become.